574 



Marvels of the Universe 



Republic surged at the gates of Maestricht. The town was bombarded, and by the advice of the 

 savants who accompanied the army to select their share of the plunder, the cathedral and its neigh- 

 bourhood was spared from the fire of the artillery. When at last the city fell, a rush was made to 

 secure the treasure. But the canon of St. Peter's, suspecting the reason of such peculiar forbearance, 

 removed the specimen to a vault. He was, however, speedily compelled to disgorge his ill-gotten 

 prize, which was triumphantly borne off and deposited in the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, to be 

 studied and named by the great Cuvier. He bestowed the name " Mosasaurus " — the Lizard of 

 the Meuse. A cast thereof is one of the treasures of the British Museum of Natural History. For 

 a long while discussion waxed furious as to what kind of animal these jaws really represented, for 

 Cuvier's verdict was not universally accepted, though it proved to be right in the end, and it was 

 not till other remains in other parts of the world came to light that the mystery was 

 solved. 



We now know that the Mosasaurs represented the last of the great sea-dragons ; they attained 

 their zenith as the old Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs were passing away ; that is to say, they throve 

 during the Cretaceous age. By many, nowadays, they are described as fossil Sea-serpents ; and 

 it is certain that they are nearly related to the Hzards of to-day. All the evidence goes to show that 





-^ 



Photo bitl 



[/. H. Craitree. 



THE BEAUTIFUL TEETH OF THE COMMON WHELK. 



they, or their forbears, were land- dwellers. At first, we may suppose, like the Monitor lizards haunt- 

 ing river banks and taking readily to the water, they became gradually more and more aquatic, 

 and in proportion their limbs gradually assumed a paddle shape, as did those of the Ichthyosaurs 

 and Plesiosaurs before them, and whales and porpoises which have followed. 



We may assume that this process of transformation began in what is now the European area, 

 and that as they became more and more aquatic so they spread further and further afield, for fossil 

 Mosasaurs occur both in North and South America and in New Zealand. Some of these were giants 

 of fifty feet or more in length ; some did not exceed fifteen feet. In some, as in the species of the 

 genus Edestosaurus of the Upper Cretaceous of North America, the body had become excessively long 

 and snake-like, and hence the association with the Sea-serpent. They must have swarmed in the 

 old seas that once surged over what is now Western Kansas, for thousands of specimens have been 

 obtained from this region. 



Some of these, undoubtedly, had a long fin down the back, and all, the world over, have a 

 remarkable feature about the lower jaw. This was hinged across its middle, and the two halves 

 were not fixed at the snout end. Thus they resembled the jaws of snakes, from which we argue that 

 they must have fed upon creatures of greater bulk than the width of the head. But once the victim 

 was caught between those terrible backwardl}' curved teeth, escape was impossible. 



